legislation would help them out. if we wait until something happens, they will loss what they have invested. it's a good thing for the small businesses. on the whole i think it's great legislation and i look forward to it passing. >> thank you, next speaker. >> good afternoon, my name is john pakz ton, i was on the advisory committee and i'm act ive with spur. i strongly encourage this legislation. my concern is the longevity of the housing stock in san francisco. very few you people realize we have the oldest housing stock in the side of the mississippi

and the majority of these buildings were built before world war ii and includes material that is susceptible to decay and deterioration. the cap support that in the magnitude earthquake that about 58,000 residents would lose their home that is about 28,000 housing units. it's not how many housing units we build every year. it's how many we keep. it's taken the last 15 years to build those 28 units. everybody started off being at each other's throats looking out for each other's best interest. after everybody saw the importance of what was going to happen, we all came together and in the end there is a unanimous conclusion that would support the

recommendations you have in front of you now. this is what the caps report looks like. a report that never saved a life, it never prevented property damages. it's only what you folks do with it afterwards and we strongly encourage you to take up this legislation and prove it. this is the first step in many steps in the earthquake safety program and it's going to have the greatest bang for the buck. thanks for your support. >> thank you very much, next speaker. >> good evening, my name is -- more importantly i have been a residenter renter in san francisco in an apartment in a building that is not seismically safe. i'm under

rent control and i have been in that apartment for 20 years. if it means having to pass that assures the safety of me and the cotenants in the apartment of i have no problem with such a pass through and to ensure the safety and resilience of san francisco i fully hope you support this proposition. thank you. >> thank you very much. next speaker? >> my name is cheryl. i'm a visiting professor as mills college and also a former tenant in a soft story in san francisco and current tenant in a soft story in the city of berkeley. i completed my education where i studied the building soft story ordinance as wells my dissertation. i would like to offer myself as a resource in the implementation

planning going forward for this law bass it is a law that i will like to see pass. the current state of soft story building residents an opportunity -- it's not that -- rather that owners even those that have the desires and resources to make-up grades are stuck in a catch 22 with regards to the pressures they are under in the housing mark. without looking to doing an upgrade seriously those that do remain the suckers as a disadvantage to the peers that do not. what management does is take that a way, 25 percent of the land building owners who were notified and required to do an evaluation did a

retrofit. doing it now is inevitable. so why should you do exactly what berkeley did? they haven't passed their mandatory second phase retrofit ordinance yet and now they are the suckers again because of failure of government action to follow through. and only government action can signal to tenants that it's worth paying more for a retrofit unit. we need all stake holders in the environment to receive that. >> thank you very much. next speaker? >> good afternoon supervisors, my name is michael wills. i'm an architect and earthquake safety group. i speak in favor of this program because it shows a common sense foresight to have an ordinance that offers and approach to strengthening, financing and a sensitivity to keeping people

in their homes. after seeing and working with the details on patrick's committee, i think the city can be proud of this ordinance. it's one that has been drafted with care to all the concerns and not only of the technical seismic committee, technical and seismic professionals, but to the real sense itivity and keeping people in their homes and bringing the financial along with it shows that this is a program that will take care to make sure that all have access to the things that we all wants which is to make a safer, more residue resilient city. so i strongly urge this. >> thank you very much. next speaker. >> good afternoon supervisors, my name is david friedman. i'm

here representing the earthquake engineering research institute, spur, 38 years of practice as a structural engineer and resident of san francisco. as you have heard, so much work has been put into this. this is a very thought fully put together, very thoroughly put together. i strongly urge your support as well as your initiative for this program. most importantly, though, i think you have the opportunity not only for the city of san francisco but for the entire bay area demonstrating leadership and finally taking the necessary actions to an abate the risk of these soft story buildings. >> thank you very much. next speaker. >> good afternoon supervisors, my name is noel cummins. i'm a

general contractor and property owner in san francisco. most everyone greece agrees with the seismic retrofit as a worthy goal and i agree. those that don't agree, will financing fall on renters. the disgracement of long-term tenants is a probability. this is a time to find a middle ground that grants benefits to property owners and tenants equally. here are some any displaced tenant will have a choice of affordable housing rent will stay the same, all rent control laws apply, owners will pass i am improvements to seismic up grades to the tenants and any owner do you

doing any seismic upgrades will upgrade for parking. the associated permit fee would be halved. the owner would receive some compensation. >> thank you very much. next speaker? >> hello, i'm courtney clarkson and i want to say i do support this legislation. i think it's very important. i renovated half a dozen small buildings in san francisco over the last 30 years and that's something that i have always done. i would like to tell you a little bit of the realities having done major retrofit on a building. i was aware that in march of

2010. the board of supervisors unanimously passed legislation to get owners to voluntary retrofit and strengthen soft story buildings which was what i i had and they would wave buildings fees and expedited permits. in may of 2011 i went with my engineer to submit plans to retrofit a building and i had the plan checker from hell who had no idea of what we were trying to do, got no fee reductions, after a year of going back and forth it finally passed and went to the bureau of street use and mapping which looked at google earth and came up with a bunch of things that

had nothing to do with working with this building. that took another couple months. by the time i finally got the permit in october. it's downpours and as we show we have a series of earthquakes and finally got done about 6 months later. looks great, needed to be done and i looked at my tax bill a couple months ago and i wasn't supposed to have my taxes raise today do this. it went up a lot. >> thank you. i will be asking about dbi and make sure we are being coordinated on this. next speaker. >> mr. chairman, representative of the committee, i'm with the association of realtors. we support the ordinance and in particular we have been very

pleased with the progress we have been making with the city staff and sponsors and authors of this legislation for one amendment that we have requested and that is to require disclosure at the time of sale. we have crafted the amendments submitted them to mr. leaney and he's committed to work with us and craft that legislation and insert it in the appropriate time as soon as possible. this will help facilitate the intent and direction of the ordinance as well as a shorter greater compliance at the time of sales. thank you very much. >> thank you very much. would that be trailing legislation? no. great. thank you, next speaker. >> good afternoon, my name is george -- i'm a native san san

francisco, it's the kind of thing that makes me proud to be a san franciscans. we have seen what has happened when people are not prepared for a disaster. i applaud that you are creating a clear policy that will help us make the mistakes that have been happening in the past. >> other do i do not have any more cards. please lineup if you have any questions. >> my name is jeremy paul. i'm here as both -- renter. it has a large position of a

resident control and mostly rent control mostly unstable or unsafe housing. these properties are also economically unstable. i want to speak very strongly in support of this ordinance in the pass through as it's constructed. it's important to main tain this housing. i foresee an --ellis act bonanza for people that cannot maintain these buildings if they can not pass it through as it is. frankly the increase in value to the property owner, i think is negligently considering how

much money was made by property owners who were able to demolish their properties after loma prieta. nobody thinks it's a benefit to tear down a building. so a lot of this housing is not being maintained in the way it needs to be maintained to preserve the rent controlled housing resources in the oldest buildings in san francisco. please observe the pass through as constructed. >> thank you very much. >> supervisors, my name is michael hammond. i'm here on behalf of the national association and remodeling industry. we saw with our own eyes firsthand the value of this kind of retrofitting in

loma prieta. working on the damaged buildings after the earthquake and those buildings that had modest amounts of strengthening performed so much better. the investment value of this kind of legislation for the property owners is enormous. i don't think much has been made for the value to the occupants of these buildings of not being displaced. when you go to other places that have had tragedy keys like in new orleans after katrina or other countries that have had earthquakes, the lives of the displaced people is truly miserable. to force thousands of people to be forced to live in temporary housing in tents, to be able to avoid that outcome is an enormous benefit, benefit not only to them, but to everybody

because it facilitates the rebuilding the city, facilitates getting back to normal. it would be irresponsible not to pass this legislation. we know the earthquake is coming and the damage it will do and the displacement will be huge. urge you to please pass this legislation. thank you very much. >> thank you very much. next speaker. >> good afternoon supervisors. i'm sar is a short with the housing rights committee of san francisco. we also applaud this legislation and believe that it's very beneficial for the city at large including the renters in terms of preventing displacement of tenants and rent control housing. we also have some concerns the cost to the pass throughs to the

tenants in the form of rent increases. unfortunately for some residents this could be as much as $80-100 a month and with limited incomes in this economy that is way too expensive for some to be able to afford and believe it will cause displacement for people trying to do something for the very opposite that is trying to prevent a displacement. it seems only fair that rather to allow for a hundred percent of for these retrofit i am improvements to pass through these renters we look at the line of 50 percent split and actually truth be told, we believe what the property i am improvements that the owners are getting the fact that they can write this off on their taxers they are also preserving

their property and as you heard one of the owners today speak of their possibilities for renting the apartment for a higher value and in fact it makes more sense that tents tenants should have no cost to bear in this, however we understand the benefits, renters and the cost being somewhat limited if we did a 50 percent pass through where we shared cost. we do think that is fair and we are willing to support that. >> thank you. >> mr. goal son. >> ted goal son. i want to reiterate what sally said. most capital i am improvements in the rent ordinance do get a 5050 pass through. however for

code work for seismic is a hundred percent pass through. it seems only fair that for this particular program which will result in some pretty hefty rent increases for people that can barely pay today. i think it's fair. landlords get the increase in the value of their buildings and they get the tax write offs. in addition we should look at how to make it more automatic. right now tenants who get assistance have a tough time. we would like to see that be more automatic and we have a concern with

eviction. many tenants are evicted supposedly temporarily for capital improvement but never come back to their apartment and it's higher rent which turned into a condo. people that say there will be no eviction because of this type of work, if they include that in the ordinance that tenants cannot be evicted for seismic retrofit work. thank you. >> thank you, next speaker. >> good afternoon, supervisors, with the department association. i'm here to support the seismic retrofit legislation and remind this body that this is a hearing on the retrofit legislation and not a hearing on the rent ordinance, but to offer a historical perspective on the pass through issue which seems to be a hot button today. one

of the more liberal historically liberal members of this body supervisor former supervisor and current assembly member tom, was actually the person that created the hundred percent pass through on seismic mandatory legislation. it took us about two years to craft that hundred percent seismic pass through together as a group with all the tenant that was were here today, all the property owners and supervisor signed off on that because he felt this seismic retrofit work was that important to preserve our rent control housing stock. thank you very much, supervisors. >> thank you. next speaker. >> good afternoon, supervisors, this is very important legislation, thank you for working on it together. a couple of thoughts. i'm

sympathetic to the situation of lower income residents but lower income building owners also need some attention. so some combination, if you are going to think of a less than a hundred percent, then do in some kind of income qualification. renters come in all income brackets and if you are going to make a policy to make one lower, let's make it to fit them. perhaps something you can also consider if there would be some kind of tax abatement for the construction. but, the biggest thing that i'm concerned about is fire. and we can retrofit every 5 union plus building in san francisco and the next building might be a single family home and the water heater falls over and everything burns anyway. i'men

encouraging you to look at everything. >> good afternoon supervisors, i'm the owner of property management systems. we are a property management company we've done some modeling around the numbers regarding whether or not individuals would be displaced and we haven't really found a place where they would be. should the numbers reach the 75 levels, there is a hard ship process in place. we have found that not only in one instance the tenant did not get a hard ship fchl they are needy in that facet they will be granted a hard ship assistance in that situation. >> i'm president of metro

construction. i have listened to everybody here today and thought it's really mazeing the amount of support that everybody has here. i didn't know what the public response was to but i'm glad to see it. what i didn't hear is that we actually did a 40-unit apartment building soft story retrofit last year. it really benefited the building. it was almost no impact on the tenants whatsoever. they have the inconvenience of not using some of the parking spaces during the construction. there was a restaurant. we did our work in the nighttime in the restaurant. everyone seemed to have benefited. the cost was less than i would have thought. i hope this goes through. >> thank you very much. >> yes, good afternoon, my name

is george pagd i'm with the neighborhood. several things, we are concerned about as many people have said before, the pass through to the tenants. this is one way of evicting low cost tenants, to raise rent. so major concern. and another issue is property tax abatement. with the increase with the cost of the retrofit concern that some of the taxers will be increased sufficiently enough to have a major impact on the rents, another thing is that there are other types of property and many other residents that are at far risk than these 10,000 soft story buildings. and that is another major concern. and i think that

it should be great emphasis placed on low cost retrofit that mr. vich and that could be investigated and perhaps that could be a basis for the retrofit. lastly i want to thank supervisor kim, our hero for the amendments. >> are there any other members of the public who wish to speak? c'mon up. >> good afternoon supervisors. my name is -- i'm 53 years of age. the last 21 years i have lived in state of california as well as 17 years in england where i grew up and the first

15 years of my life, iran. i have seen the effects of devastation of earthquakes on all these continents and with clear confidence i can state that if there is a near source earthquake triggered by either san andreas fault or heyward fault, the soft story buildings in the bay area including city of san francisco will receive tremendous amount of failure, if not collapse resulting to the loss life and livelihood of the occupants. as a practicing engineer and the owner of a retrofit company who has provided nearly 50 seismic

retrofit apartments in east bay including alameda, berkeley and oakland, my experience has been that none of their retro fitted buildings that we have had the experience of completing have resulted to any of displacements of the existing tenants. therefore if there is a retrofit property, the tenants will not be displaced. >> thank you very much. are there any other members who would like to comment today. seeing none, public comment is closed. >> president chu. >> thank you mr. chair. i would like to thank everyone that came in support and others that raised some issues that we do need to think about and